Opinion
White House? Looks like Albanese’s in Trump’s doghouse
George Brandis
Former high commissioner to the UK and federal attorney-generalOn Monday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung will meet Donald Trump at the White House. Lee is the 14th leader of a G20 nation to have met with the president since his inauguration seven months ago. Trump has also held at least one (and in some cases several) meetings with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, India, Russia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and South Africa, as well as the president of the European Commission (which counts as a G20 member).
In June, it was announced that Trump would meet China’s leader Xi Jinping, with whom he already has an established relationship, on a date to be settled. Trump will host Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in Washington in the next two months.
Anthony Albanese is still to meet Donald Trump in person.Credit: Artists
The president has also welcomed to the White House, or paid visits to, the leaders of numerous nations outside the G20, including the king of Jordan, the emir of Qatar, the taoiseach of Ireland, the prime minister of Israel, and the presidents of Poland, Finland, Pakistan, El Salvador and, memorably, Ukraine.
Only three G20 nations have yet to secure a meeting with Trump: Brazil, Mexico – and Australia.
The socialist President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, isn’t seeking one. He is savage critic of the Trump administration, which actively supports his predecessor and political enemy Jair Bolsonaro. Continuing tensions resulting from Trump’s closure of America’s southern border make the relationship with Mexico particularly difficult; even so, the two presidents have spoken often though not in person.
It’s an open secret in Washington that the Australian Embassy cannot secure a White House meeting for Anthony Albanese, despite the persistent efforts of Kevin Rudd, and the entreaties of Rudd’s friend, the former ambassador (and occasional Trump golf partner) Joe Hockey.
Malcolm Turnbull with Donald Trump at the White House in February 2018.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Hockey – by far the best-connected Australian in Washington – was ambassador when Trump first ran for the presidency in 2016. He made it his business to reach out to him when the near-universal expectation was of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Famously, Hockey contradicted the unanimous consensus of Australia’s professional diplomats, advising Canberra to expect a Trump victory. He went on to nurture an excellent relationship with the Trump White House and Trump personally. Yet so far, even Joe’s efforts to work his rich Rolodex of MAGA contacts have been unavailing.
If Albanese does end up getting a meeting, it will have more to do with Hockey’s personal influence in Washington than the much-diminished diplomatic capital of the Australian government.
When a meeting ultimately takes place – and whether it is an invitation to the Oval Office or (as currently seems more likely), a brief face-to-face on the sidelines of United Nations “leaders week” next month – the fact that Australia has been left at the end of the queue of G20 nations is revealing.
Signalling is an important part of the language of diplomacy; the signal here couldn’t be clearer. Any other Australian prime minister would have been in the White House by now. Albanese is in the doghouse.
Not even Gough Whitlam – the last prime minister to have a tense relationship with our American ally – had the door closed to him. Whitlam met Richard Nixon in the Oval Office in July 1973, less than eight months after his election. They did not get on particularly well (Nixon privately referred to him as “Goof Whitlam”), but the bilateral relationship was unaffected.
Julia Gillard and Barack Obama chat after a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in 2011.Credit: Andrew Meares
Every prime minister since – Labor and Liberal – has developed a productive bond with their American counterpart, which has sometimes become a genuine friendship, like Bob Hawke’s exceptional closeness to the first president Bush and John Howard’s warm relationship with his son. The chemistry between Julia Gillard and Barack Obama was palpable.
Even Malcolm Turnbull’s storied argument with Trump during their first phone call – when Turnbull stood his ground and forced Trump to accept a deal on refugees he wanted to walk away from – earned him respect: Trump recognised in Turnbull a fellow tough businessman. “Malcolm and I aren’t babies,” he later said. Turnbull went on to achieve exemptions from US steel and aluminium tariffs – a feat that eluded Albanese.
Scott Morrison got on so well with Joe Biden that he persuaded him to do what no president had ever done: give Australia access to America’s undersea nuclear propulsion technology – the crown jewel of the US Navy.
Since the election, the Albanese government’s attitude to the relationship has been indifferent at best. When, at the NATO summit in June, every American ally except Spain committed to lift defence spending to 5 per cent of gross domestic product, Albanese was airily dismissive of any suggestion that Australia should do more to pull its weight. His insouciant attitude was not unnoticed in Washington.
Australia’s decision to recognise a State of Palestine – thereby undercutting America’s Middle Eastern diplomacy – caused greater anxiety. Trump’s ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee described it as not just “disappointing”; he said the administration was “disgusted by it”. No American senior official has ever criticised Australia’s foreign policy more brutally.
Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, may not be a diplomatic sophisticate, but he is close to the president; his comments are a window on Trump’s own thinking. The critique by Secretary of State Marco Rubio – formerly a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the least MAGA member of Trump’s inner circle – was less blunt but expressed equal exasperation.
The Australian-American relationship has always been strong. It will remain so, whoever the leaders of the two nations may be. But at the moment, the dangerous combination of a mercurial and petulant president, and a weak and diplomatically clueless prime minister, has kept the doors of the Oval Office embarrassingly shut to Anthony Albanese.
George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.